May Day: 1969


by Steve Cruthis


The night of the cease fire we, 1st Platoon, A Co, 1/501st were on a plateau somewhere outside of FB Professional. We were told that there was a cease fire and could not fire unless fired upon. Anyway, during the night the gooks lit lanterns and started walking down the mountains all around us. It looked the the Chinese Army had come in the picture. The next day we walked below the plateau toward the base of some mountains when we saw a patrol from one of the other platoons running back toward us, the NVA were firing at them and they never even broke stride. An airstrike was called in. Normally the strike would be at a perpendicular toward us, but for a brief second we heard a noise, everyone in our platoon turned and saw a jet maybe 50 to 100 foot off the ground behind us tearing down the vally. I could see the pilot's face. He dropped his load behind us and as the bombs fell, I thought I was history. As they started falling toward me we could hear the clicking sounds and the fins popped out. I could have thrown a rock and hit the bombs. Those babies just floated toward the target maybe 500- 600 meters in front of us. The concusion knocked us down. That was just the beginning of Tam Ky.

End
Steve Cruthis